


shifting

by caelestys



Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Character Study, M/M, Non-Graphic Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-06
Updated: 2014-12-06
Packaged: 2018-02-28 09:22:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 896
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2727146
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/caelestys/pseuds/caelestys
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>All Arthur knows how to do is fight.</p>
            </blockquote>





	shifting

He's eight years old and trudging down Wakefield drive with homework and some new storybooks weighing down his backpack. His laces whip across the concrete as he walks. He passes the local park and is immediately set upon by three older boys in Mrs. Rainier's fifth grade class. They cruelly pull his backpack off his shoulders and push him around, dancing around him in a circle, and as one of them throws his backpack aside and kicks it off the curb and into the gutter, he feels the rage bubble up inside him. With short, skinny eight-year-old limbs and an anger far bigger than his small body, he kicks and punches and yells, until the three boys are merely silhouettes running into the distance.

 

+

 

He's twelve years old and too tall and serious for his age. They're playing baseball in PE, and he's not a sports person, never has been, and one jeer becomes two becomes too many. The next thing he knows, he's sitting in his principle's office with bleeding knuckles and scraped knees and and a frown etched into his forehead. He's suspended from school for two weeks, but he feels the fierce pride bloom up his spine, even when his mother frowns and grounds him for a month. Let them make fun of me again, he thinks fiercely. Just let them.

 

+

 

He's sixteen, and his parents have put him into martial arts classes in the hope that three hours of fighting will flush the need for it from the other 165 hours of the week. This time, it's just him and a punching bag. This time, he's oddly zen, calmness settling in his fingertips and the spring of his feet against the floor. He's all whipcord strength and focused anger. He smacks into the white circle on the red bag until it's all he can see.

This time, it's him and a punching bag torn at its stitches. This time, it's the approving eyes of a sensei, careful hands guiding his ankles and wrists.

 

+

 

He's twenty and in college, and he's made some stupid throwaway comment about some girl, and now her boyfriend and two of his friends have followed him into an alley.

He flicks out his cigarette - not a habit, but the burn of alcohol makes him crave it like hell - and slips his lighter into the pocket of his trousers.

"You really don't want to mess with me, fellas," he says, lightly, hands in his pockets.

"Yeah? Why don't you prove it, faggot?" One of the guys growls.

He stops. Nods thoughtfully, then shrugs his jacket off and places it carefully over a milk crate. He's spent half his monthly wage on that jacket; he's not about to let it go to waste.

The gleam of the guy's grin is the only thing he sees before they launch themselves at him.

He's deceptively skinny, the straight lines of his jackets and press of his pants hiding slim but powerful muscles and graceful limbs, his knuckles scarred from sparring. He knows they're not expecting it when he flits under a swinging arm and punches the first one under the jaw with an uppercut, sending him stumbling back into the brick wall. He slams his knuckles into the throat of the second and shoves him into the wall, and breaks the third one's wrist.

He shrugs his jacket back on and walks out of the alleyway with a spring in his step and nothing to show for the fight except for the wrinkle in his shirt sleeves where he rolled them up.

 

+

 

He's twenty eight and cornered. Eames makes him feel threatened, and he's unfamiliar with how this feels, prickling under his skin, bristling with a shaky anger he doesn't know how to name. He's off balance and unsure for the first time in twenty years. Eames is deceptively clever, with razor sharp wit and a mind that spits out plans and backup plans that supersede his own in the blink of an eye. Eames is self-assured and messy and meticulous in his planning. He's tempting in the full curve of his lips, the slim line of his wrists, his laughing, teasing eyes.

He knows it's his fault that he missed Fischer's militarization, and his teeth hurt from gritting them together. He blames himself more than Cobb does, and as gunfire rains down upon them, he would shoot himself in the head if he didn't know he'd go straight to limbo and spend eternity alone there.

Eames finds him in the back of the warehouse, and he bristles when Eames' hand ghosts over the curve of his shoulder.

"Don't," he says, shrugging his hand off, but Eames ignores him and turns him by the shoulder, fingers digging five points of blunt pain into his skin.

He aims a punch at Eames' face, but Eames leans out of the way, catching the punch by the wrists. 

"Stop," Eames says, and he feels the fight drain out of him like water. Eames pulls him in to the sheltering curve of his body. "Stop," he says again, and as he relaxes, Eames kisses the corner of his mouth, careful and shivery, unsure. He is immediately dumbfounded and lost. He shudders and kisses back, clenching his hands against Eames' broad chest, opens his mouth against his hesitant kisses. "Arthur," Eames murmurs.

And Arthur stops fighting.

 

+

 

_fin._

**Author's Note:**

> I don't actually know if this fandom is alive anymore.
> 
> My [tumblr](http://caelestys.tumblr.com), as always.


End file.
